Samsung 840 EVO 250GB, 750GB SSD Review

840 Evolution

Last year, I had the opportunity of reviewing the original Samsung 840, which I felt was a good effort on the Samsung’s part. Despite the challenges of being the first to market with a TLC NAND based SSD, the Samsung 840 was a decent product and catered very well to its target audience – the general consumer. While the Samsung 840 was a strong product for its intended audience, it wasn’t without its drawbacks – the biggest of which was the write performance.

Now, when it comes to the SSD market, no other SSD vendor out there is making as much noise as Samsung these days and less than 10 months after Samsung’s initial unveiling of the Samsung 840, they’ve introduced the successor, the Samsung 840 EVO.

Samsung 840 Evo Specifications

Samsung 840 EVO

Samsung 840 EVO

Samsung 840 EVO

Capacity

120GB

250GB/500GB

750GB/1TB

Controller

Samsung S4LN045X01-8030

Samsung S4LN045X01-8030

Samsung S4LN045X01-8030

NAND

19nm Toggle Mode 2.0 TLC

19nm Toggle Mode 2.0 TLC

19nm Toggle Mode 2.0 TLC

Sequential Reads

530 MB/s

540 MB/s

540 MB/s

Sequential Writes

410 MB/s

520 MB/s

520 MB/s

DRAM Cache

256MB LPDDR2

512MB LPDDR2

1GB LPDDR2

Interface

SATA 6Gb/s

SATA 6Gb/s

SATA 6Gb/s

Warranty

3 Years

3 Years

3 Years

Today we’ll be reviewing both the 250GB and the 750GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD; however, it’ll also be available in 120GB, 500GB and 1TB flavors as well when it becomes available in early August. As you may have noticed, the capacities here are identical to the capacities found on the original Samsung 840 with the exception that the 840 EVO now has both the 750GB and 1TB capacities.

Now what’s important about the 750GB and 1TB capacities is that Samsung is now a competitor to the recently introduced Crucial M500 SSD, which is available in up to the 960GB capacity. Previous to the introduction of the Curical M500, there really wasn’t much of an option for an SSDs greater than 512GB and if the option were available, the SSD was either terrible or it cost a fortune.

Samsung 830 vs Samsung 840 vs Samsung 840 Pro Specifications

Samsung 830

Samsung 840

Samsung 840 EVO

Samsung 840 Pro

Capacity

256GB

250GB

250GB

256GB

Controller

Samsung S4LJ204X01-Y040 (MCX)

Samsung S4LN021X01-8030 (MDX)

Samsung S4LN045X01-8030 (MEX)

Samsung S4LN021X01-8030 (MDX)

NAND

27nm Toggle Mode 1.0 MLC

21nm Toggle Mode 2.0 TLC

19nm Toggle Mode 2.0 TLC

21nm Toggle Mode 2.0 MLC

Sequential Reads

520 MB/s

540 MB/s

540 MB/s

540 MB/s

Sequential Writes

400 MB/s

250 MB/s

520 MB/s

520 MB/s

Warranty

3 Years

3 Years

3 Years

5 Years

Here’s a look at the Samsung SSD lineup along with specifications for each of the respective 2xxGB capacity drives. There are a couple different things to note here. First off, we’ve got a new controller on the Samsung 840 EVO. The Samsung 830 used a MCX controller, the 840 and 840 Pro used a MDX controller and now we’ve got a MEX controller with the 840 EVO. Second, we’ve got new NAND. The 840 EVO contains Samsung’s latest 19nm Toggle Mode 2.0 TLC (3 bits per cell) NAND which should help reduce power consumption and increase capacity.

Beyond the new hardware though, what should really catch your eye is the 840 EVO’s performance. Whereas sequential reads were fairly quick even on the original Samsung 840, sequential writes were quite slow, clocking in at only 250MB/s. With the Samsung 840 EVO, Samsung was able to double the write performance pushing sequential writes to a whopping 520MB/s, equaling performance found on the 840 Pro.